2022’s CMS Market Share Report – Latest Trends and Usage Stats

Are you looking for the latest CMS market share trends and usage stats?

These statistics can help you better understand the CMS market so you can choose the best CMS for your needs. Or you might even learn something new about your favorite content management system.

In this CMS market share report, we’ve collected the latest trends and usage stats for all the biggest content management systems.

CMS Popularity and Market Share Report 2022

We’ve divided this CMS market share report into several different categories. Simply use the table of contents below to jump straight to the statistics or content management system you’re most interested in.

• CMS Usage Statistics
• CMS Market Share
• Content Management System Market Value
• WordPress Market Share
• eCommerce CMS Platforms Market Share
• Wix Market Share
• Squarespace Market Share
• GoDaddy Market Share
• Joomla CMS Market Share
• Weebly Market Share
• Drupal CMS Market Share
• Shopify Market Share
• CMS Predictions for 2022 and Beyond

CMS Usage Statistics

• In 2011, around 76% of all websites were hand-coded. By 2022, this figure had fallen to around 33%.
• Today, over 78 million websites use a content management system. That’s around 58% of all websites.
• When we look at the top 1 million websites based on traffic, almost 900,000 use a CMS. That’s nearly 90%.
• However, experts warn that content management systems may be less popular in the business space. This is due to the higher costs of setting up a CMS for business use and a lack of CMS knowledge among small-to-medium enterprises.

The best content management systems make it easy to manage your content and create web pages, usually without having to write any code.

While it is possible to build a website without a CMS, you would need to learn a few different programming languages such as HTML, CSS, and PHP. You might even need to hire expert developers or web design specialists.

Without a CMS, you would need to write code every time you wanted to update your site. You might also have to deal with common errors if you make a mistake in the code.

With that being said, it’s not surprising that so many websites already use a CMS. In the future, we expect to see the number of hand-coded sites continue to fall, as more and more people realize the benefits of a good CMS.

CMS Market Share

• Throughout 2021, North America held a dominant share of the global CMS market, with Europe holding the second largest share.
• Experts predict that North America’s share will continue to grow throughout the 2022-2028 time period.
• When compared to other regions, it is estimated that Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa will contribute the least to the global market throughout 2022-2028.
• According to experts, the government, life science, medical and health, retail, consumer goods, and defense sectors all contribute “significantly” to the size of the CMS market.
• In 2021, enterprise web content management dominated the CMS sector, although the healthcare sector did acquire a “significant” share of the CMS market.
• Experts predict that the Asia Pacific region will see the highest compound annual growth rate (CAGR) throughout 2022-2028. CAGR is the average rate that an investment grows or shrinks over a period of time.
• According to experts, the CMS market in the Asia Pacific region is currently experiencing growth due to more small and medium-sized businesses adopting content management systems.

North America may continue to dominate the CMS market, but experts predict that the Asia Pacific region will get the highest return on investment out of all the regions.

This suggests the Asia Pacific market will play a much larger role in the CMS space, moving forward.

Content Management System Market Value

• The global CMS market was valued at approximately $35,903 million in 2018.
• By 2021, the global CMS market was worth around $17.5 billion.
• The CMS sector is predicted to hit $25.5 billion by 2028.
• Experts predict that the CMS market will have a compound annual growth rate of roughly 6.5% between 2022 and 2028.

No matter whether you’re starting a blog, running a global eCommerce business, or making a small business website, the right CMS can help you succeed.

With 58% of all websites now using a CMS, it’s easy to see why this is a billion-dollar industry that shows no signs of slowing down.

WordPress Market Share

• WordPress has the biggest CMS market share.
• Out of all the websites that use a known CMS, 45% of those sites use WordPress.
• In 2022, WordPress has a 64.2% share of the global CMS market.
• It is estimated there are 34,896,678 live WordPress websites.
• There are over three million, five hundred thousand WordPress blogs and websites in the US alone.
• When we look at the top 1 million sites based on traffic, 28.7% of those sites use WordPress open-source software.
• 29.65% of the top 100 thousand websites use WordPress, and 29.41% of the top 10 thousand sites run on WordPress.
• The WordPress CMS market share has grown from 55.3%-64.2% between 2011 and 2022, which is an 8.9% increase.

WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS, and that seems unlikely to change anytime soon.

The figures show that the number of hand-coded websites has decreased every year since 2011. At the same time, the number of WordPress websites has increased every single year. This suggests that WordPress is a popular choice among first-time CMS users.

This makes sense, as WordPress is one of the most user-friendly content management systems. WordPress is also one of the most flexible and customizable CMS platforms, and you can even download it for free from WordPress.org.

No matter whether you want to start a personal blog, an online store, or a multilingual website, you’ll have no problems finding the perfect WordPress theme and plugins. You can think of plugins as modules or apps that extend the core CMS.

WordPress is also optimized for search engines and gives you easy access to specialist SEO tools such as AIOSEO. All of this explains why WordPress has such a big user base.

Since WordPress is an open-source CMS, you can use it with a huge range of different WordPress hosting providers. Again, this makes WordPress a flexible CMS that appeals to lots of different people and businesses.

However, although WordPress has a far bigger market share than any other CMS, the content management system space is huge.

Even a 1% market share still translates to millions of websites. With that in mind, many of the content management systems in this report are still big players on the CMS market, even if they can’t compete with the sheer number of WordPress websites.

For more information, please see our ultimate guide on how to create a WordPress website.

eCommerce CMS Platforms Market Share

• When you look at the top 1 million eCommerce sites, 2.67% of them use WooCommerce, a popular WordPress plugin.
• 3.84% of the top 100 thousand websites use WooCommerce, and 3.82% of the top 10 thousand sites use WooCommerce.
• Out of the top 1 million eCommerce sites, Shopify is the second most widely used CMS at 2.05%.
• Meanwhile, 0.85% of those sites use Magento, and 0.49% use OpenCart.

It may not be a standalone CMS, but the statistics show that a significant number of online stores use WordPress and WooCommerce to create a CMS with eCommerce functionality. For this reason, we’re including WooCommerce in our CMS market share report.

According to the data, eCommerce sites that get the most traffic are more likely to use WooCommerce, although Shopify is a close second favorite among the top online stores.

Shopify is a fully hosted platform so you don’t need to worry about performance, which could explain why Shopify is used by 2.05% of high-traffic eCommerce sites.

Similarly, there is no shortage of managed WordPress hosting providers who can fine-tune your WooCommerce store and make sure it provides the best possible customer experience.

If you choose WordPress and WooCommerce as your eCommerce CMS, then you’ll also have access to lots of WooCommerce plugins that can extend and optimize the platform.

Since WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, you can also follow our ultimate guide on how to boost WordPress speed and performance.

With their managed hosting and high performance, both Shopify and WooCommerce have a lot to offer online store owners and entrepreneurs. For a more detailed look at these two platforms, please see our Shopify vs WooCommerce comparison.

Wix Market Share

• Out of all the websites that use a known CMS, around 10% of those sites use Wix. This makes Wix one of the most popular content management systems.
• Wix is used by around 7 million websites.
• In the United States, 991,860 websites use Wix.
• Despite holding a 10% share of the global CMS market, Wix only powers 0.56% of the top 1 million websites.
• 0.69% of the top 100 thousand websites use Wix, and 0.98% of the top 10 thousand sites use Wix.

When we compare Wix’s market share to its closest competitor, we get interesting results.

Out of the top 1 million sites, 28.7% of those websites use WordPress but only 0.56% use Wix. This suggests that Wix appeals to small sites and businesses that get less traffic, rather than high-traffic websites.

By comparison, high-traffic websites are much more likely to use WordPress.

For a more detailed comparison, please see our complete guide to Wix vs. WordPress – which one is better?

Squarespace Market Share

• Looking at the websites with a known CMS, around 3.71% of those sites use the Squarespace CMS.
• Around 2,896,221 live websites use Squarespace.
• 0.69% of the top 1 million sites use Squarespace.
• 1.36% of the top 100 thousand websites use Squarespace, while 3.16% of the top 10 thousand sites use this popular hosted platform.
• Squarespace’s CMS market share has grown from 0.2%-3.0% between 2011 and 2022, which is a 2.8% increase in 10 years.

Similar to Wix, Squarespace is much more popular among sites that have less traffic, compared to sites that get lots of visitors.

This makes sense, as Squarespace is best known for its ready-made templates and ease of use, which makes it a great platform for first-time website owners and smaller businesses.

Squarespace also has some limits that may be less appealing to larger businesses. For example, Squarespace only has a few integrations with third-party services. This can be a problem for big companies that want to use lots of different software and services with their content management system.

All of this may explain why we see larger organizations opt for flexible platforms such as WordPress, while smaller sites tend to choose hosted platforms like Squarespace or Wix.

For more information on this topic, you can see our guide on Square vs. WordPress – which one is better?

GoDaddy Market Share

• 2.24% of all websites with a known CMS, use the GoDaddy website builder.
• It is estimated that 1,750,645 live websites are GoDaddy sites.
• When we look at the top 1 million sites, 0.02% of those sites use GoDaddy.
• 0.02% of the top 100 thousand websites use GoDaddy, while 0.03% of the top 10 thousand sites are built with GoDaddy.

Our market share stats show that very few high-traffic websites use GoDaddy, which reflects the audience that GoDaddy seems to be targeting.

GoDaddy’s website builder is a simple and easy tool that lets you create a professional looking website without any special design or development skills. It comes with ready-made blocks and layouts, which are perfect for anyone who is looking to create a website, fast.

However, GoDaddy is not as feature rich or flexible as some of the other content management systems and builders on our list. This could explain why it’s only used by 0.02% of the top 1 million websites.

If you’re looking to move away from GoDaddy, then you can see our expert pick of the best GoDaddy alternatives.

Joomla CMS Market Share

• 1.72% of all websites with a known CMS, use Joomla.
• It is estimated that 1,325,993 live websites use Joomla.
• When we look at the top 1 million sites based on traffic, 1.34% of those sites use the Joomla CMS.
• 2.04% of the top 100 thousand websites run on Joomla, while 1.89% of the top 10 thousand sites rely on Joomla as their CMS.
• Joomla’s CMS market share has reduced from 10.9% to 2.5% between 2011-2022. That’s a 8.4% decrease in 10 years.

Joomla still has a significant user base, but the growing popularity of user-friendly platforms such as WordPress and Shopify have affected its market share.

Many shared hosting providers offer one-click install packages for Joomla. However, the Joomla control panel isn’t as straightforward as other systems, with lots of different menus and settings that you can use to customize your site. This means that Joomla has a steep learning curve.

By default, Joomla also doesn’t allow users to install extensions and templates from the control panel, which can make it difficult for first-time users to find helpful addons.

This is a powerful platform with a loyal fanbase, but with so many user-friendly alternatives we may see Joomla’s market share continue to decline.

To learn more, please see our guide to WordPress vs. Joomla Vs. Drupal.

Weebly Market Share

• 1.28% of all websites that use a known CMS use Weebly.
• It is estimated that 991,368 live websites run on Weebly.
• When we look at the top 1 million sites based on traffic, 0.09% of those sites use the Weebly CMS.
• 0.17% of the top 100 thousand websites are built using Weebly, while 0.31% of the top 10 thousand sites use Weebly.

Weebly is a fully hosted platform that has everything beginners need to build a website, including ready-made templates. a built-in contact form, professionally-designed sliders, and photo galleries.

It’s an easy-to-use platform, which explains why Weebly has a user base of over 991,000 websites.

However, as a fully hosted platform you’re locked into the functionality that Weebly provides. You can’t hire a developer or designer to add new features to a Weebly website, which might be why so few high-traffic websites use Weebly.

For more details, please see our guide on WordPress vs. Weebly – which is better?

Drupal CMS Market Share

• 0.71% of all websites whose CMS is known, use Drupal.
• It is estimated that 555,754 live websites use Drupal.
• When we look at the top 1 million sites based on traffic, 2.93% of those sites are built using Drupal.
• 6.82% of the top 100 thousand websites use Drupal, compared to 10.46% of the top 10 thousand sites.
• Drupal’s CMS market share has reduced from 6.1%-1.8% between 2011 and 2022. That’s a 4.3% decrease in 10 years.

The CMS statistics show that Drupal has a smaller overall market share compared to other content management systems on our list. Despite this, Drupal is used by a much larger percentage of high-traffic sites.

By comparison, Wix has a much larger overall market share (10%) but is used by a much lower percentage of the top 1 million websites (0.56%).

Drupal may not be the most popular CMS platform, but it’s a powerful software with lots of support resources. It also has a reputation as a very secure CMS.

While smaller websites, first-time site owners, and bloggers are choosing user-friendly platforms, the figures show that Drupal still has a loyal following among high-traffic websites.

For more information, please see our guide on WordPress vs. Joomla Vs. Drupal – which one is better?

Shopify Market Share

• Shopify has a 6.2% share of the CMS market.
• Impressively, Shopify’s market share has risen from just 3.4% in 2020 to 6.6% in 2022. That’s an increase of 3.2% in just two years.
• It is estimated that 3,834,405 live websites use Shopify.
• Shopify is used by 2.05% of the top 1 million eCommerce websites.
• 2.62% of the top 100 thousand websites use Shopify, while 3.99% of the top 10 thousand sites are Shopify websites.
• During the fourth quarter of 2020, Shopify reported earnings of $977.7 million, which was a 94% increase compared to the same period in 2019.
• In 2020, Shopify reported a 53% year-over-year increase in subscription revenue.

Shopify had a sudden spike in popularity between 2020-2022, which saw its market share rise by 3.4% in just two years.

Many experts say this is due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With physical shops closed around the world, many businesses needed an easy way to sell their products online during this time.

As an all-in-one fully hosted eCommerce platform, Shopify is a user-friendly choice for anyone who wants to launch an online store, fast. Shopify comes with full inventory management, unlimited products, powerful analytics, marketing tools, and lots of designs, all in one product.

However, Shopify forces you to use its Shopify Payment platform. If you prefer to use your own payment processing solution, then Shopify charges an extra 2% transaction fee which is very high compared to other eCommerce solutions.

With that in mind, we may see Shopify’s growth slow as store owners start to look for more affordable Shopify alternatives. For example, you might move from Shopify to WooCommerce.

CMS Predictions for 2022 and Beyond

• Experts predict that artificial intelligence and machine learning will be big trends in the CMS space.
• In particular, they see an increasing demand for image recognition, voice recognition and transcription, natural language understanding and natural language processing in content management systems.
• Studies predict that personalized technologies will be another must-have feature among CMS users.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning promise to make all kinds of tasks easier and more efficient.

The world of content management systems is no exception, and it will be interesting to see how these platforms use advanced technologies in the future.

Sources: BuiltWith Trends, W3Techs, Zion Market Research, Facts and Factors, Statistica, Shopify, BuiltWith Knowledge Base.

We hope this CMS market share report helped you learn all about the latest trends and usage stats. You may also want to see our research on top marketing statistics as well as latest web design trends and stats.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 2022’s CMS Market Share Report – Latest Trends and Usage Stats first appeared on WPBeginner.

October 14, 2022 at 03:12PM

How to Notify Users When Their Comment is Approved in WordPress

Do you want to notify users when their comment is approved in WordPress?

By default, WordPress doesn’t notify users when you publish their comment. This can leave visitors wondering whether you’ve received their comment, or whether you plan to publish it at all.

In this article, we will show you how to notify users when you approve their comment.

Why Notify Users When Their Comment is Approved in WordPress

Comments allow your website visitors to communicate with you and other readers.

They are a great way to get engagement and feedback, and can help build a community around your WordPress blog.

By default, WordPress puts all new comments into a moderation queue. You can see these comments in the admin area, but they won’t appear on your website until you approve them.

Comment moderation is the best way to keep discussions safe and spam free. However, by default WordPress doesn’t notify users when you approve their comment.

Instead, visitors would need to keep checking your site to see whether their comment has appeared. Most commenters will forget to do that. Sometimes, visitors may even assume that you’ve rejected their comment if they don’t get a notification.

By confirming that you’ve published their comment, you can encourage visitors to come back to your WordPress website. This is great for engagement and can create a more interesting and lively discussion.

With that being said, let’s see how to notify users when you approve their comment.

How to Notify Users When Their Comment Is Approved in WordPress

The easiest way to notify people when you publish their comment is by using Comment Approved Notifier Extended. This plugin is simple to set up and lets you send a custom email to your users.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, the plugin works automatically. Every time you approve a comment, WordPress will send a notification to that person’s email address.

If you want to change the email’s content, then simply click on Comment Approved in the WordPress dashboard.

You will now see the default email and all of the different pieces of shortcode that you can use in your message.

When it creates an email, Comment Approver Notification will replace the shortcode with real information. For example, it will replace [commentauthor] with the name the person typed into your WordPress website.

You can either type or paste any shortcode into the small email editor. You can also type in plain text, as you can see in the following image.

When you’re happy with how the email looks, you can simply go ahead and click on the ‘Update’ button.

Now Comment Approver Notification will send the new email to your users.

Email is an important way to communicate with your visitors, users, and customers. With that in mind, it’s a good idea to use an SMTP plugin to improve email deliverability and keep your comment notifications out of the spam folder.

WP Mail SMTP is the best WordPress SMTP plugin on the market. It allows you to easily use any SMTP server to send WordPress emails safely and reliably.

To learn more, see our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending emails.

We hope this article helped you learn how to notify users when their comment is approved in WordPress. You can also go through our guide on how to create an email newsletter and our expert pick of the best live chat software for small businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Notify Users When Their Comment is Approved in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

October 13, 2022 at 11:43PM

How to Try WordPress for Free Without a Domain or Hosting

Do you want to try WordPress for free without buying domain name or hosting?

Normally, you need a domain name and hosting to build a WordPress website. However, many users may want to give it a try before spending money.

In this article, we’ll show you multiple ways to try WordPress for free without domain or hosting. We’ll also talk about things to try in WordPress and making a live website.

Why Try WordPress for Free without Domain or Hosting?

Normally, you need a domain name and a hosting account to make a WordPress website.

A domain name usually costs $14.99 per year (often non-refundable) and web hosting starts at $7.99 per month (usually paid yearly).

Now that’s a significant amount of money if all you want is to try WordPress.

Unfortunately, the WordPress.org website doesn’t offer any free WordPress trial.

Luckily, there are still plenty of ways to try WordPress for free without buying a domain name or signing up for a hosting account.

Let’s take a look at some of the easiest ways to try self-hosted WordPress.org for free (no domain or hosting account needed).

• Try WordPress Online with a Full Refund (unrestricted but requires credit card payment upfront)
• Try WordPress for Free on Your Computer (unlimited free WordPress development)
• Try WordPress with WordPress.com (modified WordPress experience with limited functionality)
• Things to Try in Your Free WordPress Demo
• Launching Your WordPress Website

1. Try WordPress Online with Full Refund on Hosting

The easiest way to try WordPress online is by using a a WordPress hosting company that offers a risk-free money back guarantee (i.e full refund for up to 30 days or even 90 days in some cases).

The benefit of this method is that you get to try WordPress for building your website. If you like it, then you can make your website online with a single click (no extra work needed).

And if you don’t like it, then you can request a full refund from your WordPress hosting company.

For this method, you’ll need a credit card to pay for the WordPress hosting upfront, but if you don’t like it, then you can get a full refund.

Here are some of the largest WordPress hosting companies that offer a full refund policy:

• Bluehost – offers free domain + web hosting with 30 day money back guarantee.
• Hostinger – offers free domain + web hosting with a 30 day refund policy.
• SiteGround – offers cloud WordPress hosting with risk-free 30 day refund policy.
• Dreamhost – offers free domain + WordPress hosting with 97 day refund policy.

All of the above hosting companies come with WordPress pre-installed, or they offer 1-click WordPress setup option.

You can quickly get started with any of them to try WordPress online risk free.

For the sake of this tutorial, we will show a step by step process on what this looks like with Bluehost which is one of the top WordPress recommended hosting provider.

First, you need to visit the Bluehost website and click on the green ‘Get Started Now’ button.

Next, you’ll be asked to choose a plan.

We recommend starting with Basic since you just want to try WordPress. You can always upgrade your hosting plan if you decide to stay on Bluehost.

Now you’ll be asked to choose a domain name. Bluehost is currently offering WPBeginner users a free domain name and 72% discount using our Bluehost coupon .

However, if you register a domain name, then the company will deduct the domain cost when you ask for a refund. You need to click on ‘I’ll create my domain later’ option at the bottom to skip this step, so you qualify for a full refund.

Next, you’ll be asked to provide personal details and finalize the hosting package.

It is important that you uncheck all optional extra addons on this page.

Addon costs are non-refundable, and you are only eligible for the full refund of your hosting bill, not addons.

Lastly, you need to enter your payment information to complete the purchase.

Bluehost will now create your hosting account and will send you an email with instructions on how to access your hosting control panel.

From your hosting control panel, you’ll notice that Bluehost has already installed WordPress for you. You can simply click on the log into WordPress button to access your website.

Requesting Refund on Bluehost

Login to your Bluehost account dashboard and click on the Support icon. From there, you need to scroll down to the contact section and start a live chat session.

Once connected to a live chat agent, you can request them to issue a full refund and cancel your account.

Important: If you’re using a hosting company that’s not mentioned above, then please make sure to read and fully understand their refund policy before making a purchase. If in doubt, reach out to the hosting company by dropping them an email.

2. Try WordPress on Your Computer

Another popular way to try WordPress is by installing it on your computer. This is what many expert developers do for client websites.

This method allows you to try WordPress for free without buying any domain or hosting. You can install plugins, themes, and make a complete website on your own computer.

The downside is that your website is limited to your own computer and not publicly viewable over the internet, but you can always make your local website online using our tutorial later.

There are several amazing free software available that allow you to set all this up on your computer.

The easiest of them all is called Local. It allows you to easily set up a local WordPress development environment on your computer. It works on MacOS, Windows, and Linux.

Simply head over to Local website and download it for your operating system.

Depending on your operating system, the installation wizard may differ slightly. For MacOS, simply click on the downloaded package and then drag and drop Local.app to the Applications folder.

Once you have installed Local, open the app on your computer.

Then click on the ‘Create a new site’ button.

Next, you’ll be asked to provide a title for your website.

Simply enter any name you want to website for your demo site and click on the Continue button.

After that, you’ll be asked to choose local environment. For instance, which server software you want to use, which MySQL or PHP version to use.

If you are not sure, then you can simply use the Preferred options and click Continue.

On the next screen, you’ll be able to choose a username and password to access WordPress admin area of your local site.

You can also change the WordPress admin email, in case you need to recover your login info.

Click on the Continue button to finish the set up wizard.

Local will now fetch and install the latest version of WordPress and create a new local website for you.

Once finished, you’ll see your local website details. From here, you can click on the WP Admin button to access WordPress dashboard.

If for some reason Local doesn’t work, or you simply want to try an alternative, then you can check out MAMP (for MacOS) or WAMP (for Windows).

3. Try WordPress with WordPress.com (No Domain Needed)

Another option that you’ll often come across for trying WordPress is WordPress.com.

Before you do that, it is important that you understand how WordPress.com is different from a self-hosted WordPress.org website.

WordPress.com is a website hosting company and a publishing platform. Basically, you don’t need to install WordPress or take care of any website maintenance.

The downside is that you don’t get full control over the software running in the background. This takes away the flexibility and freedom.

WordPress.com have a limited free plan that you can try. However, it will be missing many features of a self-hosted WordPress.org website.

For more on this topic, see our detailed guide on the differences between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

In the recent years, WordPress.com has added a Pro plan that lets you install plugins and themes, but it is far more expensive than other WordPress hosting options that we have shared above.

Things You May Want to Try in WordPress

Now that you have created a free WordPress website, you are probably wondering which things you should try.

1. Creating Content in WordPress

We recommend you start with creating blog posts and making some must have pages for your website.

2. Choosing a Website Design

After that, you may want to choose a design for your website. There are so many free and paid WordPress themes that you can use. We recommend picking up a free theme and customizing it to make your own.

You can even install a free page builder plugin like SeedProd to experience designing your website with a drag & drop interface.

3. Exploring WordPress Plugins

The real power of WordPress comes from WordPress plugins. These are like apps for your WordPress website and allow you to extend website functionality by adding new features.

There are over 60,000+ free WordPress plugins available.

Following are a few must have WordPress plugins that you should try.

1. WPForms – It allows you to add a beautiful contact form or survey to your website. There is a WPForms Lite version that you can try for free.

2. All in One SEO for WordPress – It is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market and helps you optimize your website for search engines. There is also a AIOSEO free version that you can try.

3. SmashBalloon – It is the best WordPress social media plugin that allows you to display content from your social media accounts in beautiful galleries and layouts. There is a free version of Smash Ballon for Instagram feed, Facebook feed, Twitter feed, and YouTube feed.

Need more plugin suggestions? See our full list of essential WordPress plugins that you can try on your free WordPress demo.

4. Learning WordPress Basics

Now if you are struggling finding your way around WordPress or just want to cover WordPress basics, then you can learn WordPress for free right here.

WPBeginner is the world’s largest WordPress resource site for beginners. We have been around since 2009 and have a massive library of resources for beginners.

The best place to start, would be our page on how to learn WordPress for free. There, you’ll find a step by step WordPress program divided into seven days of training.

You can also start with our free WordPress video series. That’s also a step by step program for beginners.

Once you have covered the basics, you can continue exploring WordPress Tutorials, check out WordPress glossary, or subscribe to our YouTube channel for a regular installment of WordPress tips, tricks, and how-tos.

Launching Your WordPress Website

Once you have tried WordPress, you may want to officially launch a live WordPress website.

To do that, you’ll need a domain name and a hosting account.

We recommend using Bluehost. They are the largest WordPress hosting companies and have agreed to offer WPBeginner users free domain name and a generous discount on hosting.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

Once you have signed up, you can follow our step by step instructions on how to make a website.

Now, some of you may want to move the site you created on your free WordPress trial to your new website.

Simply follow our guide on how to move your WordPress site to new host. We’ll walk you through migrating your WordPress website.

We hope this article helped you learn how to try WordPress for free without domain name. You may also want to see our comparison of the best website builders on the market, or see our guide on how to add create an online store and start selling.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Try WordPress for Free Without a Domain or Hosting first appeared on WPBeginner.

October 13, 2022 at 03:21PM

How to Add YouTube Subscribe Button in WordPress

Do you want to add a YouTube subscribe button in WordPress?

Having a YouTube subscribe button on your blog makes it easy for visitors to find your videos and subscribe to your YouTube channel.

In this article, we will show you how you can add a YouTube subscribe button to your WordPress website.

Why Add YouTube Subscribe Button in WordPress?

A YouTube channel is a great way to reach a new audience, boost your website engagement, and increase your blog traffic.

In fact, many websites also have a YouTube channel including WPBeginner.

If you’ve launched a YouTube channel to support your WordPress blog, then you should make it easy for visitors to subscribe to your YouTube channel.

That’s where a YouTube subscribe button comes in.

This button lets visitors subscribe to your channel within seconds. A subscribe button can also promote your YouTube channel to visitors who may not have heard of it yet.

In this post we have two different ways to add a YouTube subscribe button in WordPress. If you prefer to jump straight to a particular method, then you can use the links below.

• Method 1. Manually adding YouTube subscribe button code
• Method 2. Using plugin to add a YouTube subscribe bar

Method 1: Manually Adding YouTube Subscribe Button Code

One method is to create a YouTube subscribe button on the Google Developer website. You can then add this button to any widget, post or page using shortcode.

The first thing you need to do is visit the YouTube subscribe button page.

Here, you’ll need to type in your YouTube channel name or ID into the ‘Channel Name or ID’ field. To get this information, open a new tab in your browser and then head over to the YouTube homepage.

You can then click on your profile picture in the top right corner, and select ‘Settings.’

In the left-hand menu, go ahead and click on Advanced Settings.

Once you’ve done that, simply find the ‘Channel ID’ field and click on its ‘Copy’ button.

Now, switch back to the YouTube subscribe button page and paste the Channel ID into the ‘Channel Name or ID’ field.

The preview will now update to show the total number of YouTube subscribers you have.

There are two different layouts that you can use for your YouTube subscribe button. The ‘default’ layout shows the subscribe button and your total number of YouTube subscribers.

The other option is ‘full layout.’ This shows the YouTube subscribe button, your subscriber count, plus your channel’s profile picture and the title of your YouTube channel.

To see how your YouTube subscribe button will look with the full layout, simply open the ‘Layout’ dropdown and then click on ‘full.’

The preview will now update to show how your YouTube subscribe button will look with the full layout applied.

After choosing between the default and full layouts, you can choose a theme for your YouTube subscribe button.

The default theme is a white background, but you can switch to a dark theme if you prefer. This adds a darker background to your YouTube subscribe button.

To see how your subscribe button will look with the different themes, open the ‘Theme’ dropdown. You can now switch between ‘default’ and ‘dark,’ to see which theme you like the best for your website.

In the following image, you can see a YouTube subscribe button with the dark theme.

By default, the YouTube subscribe button shows your total number of YouTube followers. Showing how many people follow you on YouTube is a powerful form of social proof.

If visitors see that lots of people are following your YouTube channel, they’re more likely to see your website as an authority in your blogging niche. This can also convince more people to subscribe to your channel.

However, sometimes you may want to hide your total number of YouTube subscribers. For example, if you’re a new channel, then you may want to build your following before showing the total subscriber count on your WordPress website.

To hide how many people are subscribed to your YouTube channel, simply open the ‘Subscriber count’ dropdown and then click on ‘hidden.’

As you customize the subscribe button, Google will update the button’s embed code.

When you’re happy with how your button looks, you can go ahead and copy all of the code in the ‘Code’ section.

Now, you can simply paste the code into any widget, post or page on your WordPress site. For more details on how to place the code, you can see our guide on how to add a shortcode in WordPress.

Once you’re done, don’t forget to save your changes. You can now visit your WordPress website to see the YouTube subscribe button live.

Method 2: Using Plugin to Add a YouTube Subscribe Bar

Another way to add a YouTube subscribe button on your website is by using the YouTube Subscribe Bar plugin. Once set up, this free plugin automatically adds a ‘Subscribe to YouTube channel’ bar to every YouTube video that you embed on your website.

This subscribe bar will appear on your own YouTube videos, but also videos that you embed from other channels. This is perfect for sharing useful third-party YouTube videos on your site, while still encouraging people to subscribe to your channel.

Just be aware that this plugin only works for YouTube videos that you embed using the oEmbed format. The easiest way to embed a YouTube video using oEmbed is to head over to the YouTube video, and then click on its ‘Share’ button.

This opens a popup with various different ways that you can embed the video. To learn more about the different options, please see our guide on how to easily embed videos in WordPress blog posts.

Since we want to use oEmbed, make sure you select the ‘Embed’ option. Then, go ahead and click on ‘Copy.’

Once you’ve done that, simply open the page or post where you want to embed the video. Then, click on the + icon and search for ‘Embed.’

When you see the ‘Embed’ block, give it a click to add this block to your page or post.

You can then paste the YouTube embed link into the block.

Once you’ve done that, click on the ‘Embed’ button to embed the video. You can then save or publish the page as normal.

You will need to follow this process for every YouTube video where you want to show the subscribe bar.

Once you’ve embedded at least one video, you can go ahead and install and activate the YouTube Subscribe Bar plugin. To learn more, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activating the YouTube Subscribe Bar plugin, head over to Settings » YouTube Subscribe Bar.

In the ‘YouTube Channel ID’ field, type in or paste your channel ID. You can get this ID by following the same process described above.

In the ‘Subscribe to channel text’ field, simply type in the text that you want to show in your subscribe bar.

By default, this plugin uses ‘Subscribe to my YouTube Channel’ but you can use anything that you want.

After that, you can change the color of the bar’s background and text using the color settings towards the bottom of the page. You can also change the bar’s layout, and choose between light and dark themes.

The settings that work best will vary depending on your WordPress theme. With that in mind, you may want to try different settings to see what looks the best on your WordPress website.

When you’re happy with your changes, you can publish your subscribe bar by clicking on the ‘Save Changes’ button.

You can now visit any page or post where you’ve embedded a YouTube video, to see the subscribe bar in action.

How to Turn Website Visitors Into YouTube Subscribers

Adding a YouTube subscribe button to your WordPress site is a great way to get more subscribers. However, there are lots more ways to encourage your website’s visitors to become YouTube subscribers.

If you blog and create videos about similar topics, then you can easily embed YouTube videos in your WordPress blog posts.

If the visitor is interested in the blog post, then they may also be interested in the related YouTube video. This means there’s a good chance they’ll watch the video, and then subscribe to your YouTube channel.

Even better, if you have lots of related videos then you can organize these videos into YouTube playlists. You can then embed the YouTube playlist on your WordPress website.

An effective playlist will guide your visitors from one video to the next one in order, keeping them engaged in your content. If a visitor watches and enjoys an entire YouTube playlist, then it’s likely they’ll subscribe to your channel.

If you regularly post YouTube videos to your channel, then you may want to show the latest videos from your YouTube channel in WordPress.

This is an easy way to show visitors that you run an active YouTube channel. If the visitor likes what they see on your website, they may decide to subscribe to your channel so they never miss another video.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add a YouTube subscribe button in WordPress. You may also want to check out our guide on how to embed a Facebook video in WordPress and the best YouTube video gallery plugins for WordPress.

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The post How to Add YouTube Subscribe Button in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

October 12, 2022 at 11:40PM